LEGO building technique: LEGO water

Let’s face it, making realistic looking LEGO water is tough. And a blue baseplate just doesn’t look as good as you might want. So what do you do? Well hopefully this post will help you next time you want your minifig to go for a swim.

Let’s look at some LEGO water techniques and how we can make realistic looking LEGO water. (Click on any of the pictures to take you to the creator’s gallery.)

The trick in both of these MOCs is making the colors of the LEGO bricks lighter, the closer to shore you get; signifying the ground underneath the water getting higher.

LEGO Water Technique #2: 1×1 STUDS

If you have enough, you can use translucent 1×1 studs to give your LEGO water a sense of movement, like a mild river or something. Examples are Afghanistan River Fording by Chandler Parker, and Oasis by Nannan Zhang and The Legohaulic. (If you haven’t seen Oasis yet you should definitely check it out.):

Afghanistan River Fording by Chandler Parker

Oasis by Nannan Zhang and The Legohaulic

LEGO Water Technique #3: BLUE TRANSLUCENT TILES

If you have enough translucent blue tiles you can make fairly believable LEGO water. This looks MUCH better than just a plain blue baseplate, and many people use this technique. For example, it is used in Pirates’ Remorse by Thoy Bradley; notice how he put darker LEGO pieces underneath the translucent tiles to make the water look deeper in some areas, and used 1×1 translucent studs for bubbles:

Pirates’ Remorse by Thoy Bradley

This technique is also in Raid of Scone by Blake Baer; he used the same method but put some of the pieces in only halfway, giving it a bit of a wavy look. And check out MicroScale Island by Eggy Pop; his MOC show again that when building LEGO water the closer to shore you get, the lighter color the pieces need to be:

Raid of Scone by Blake Baer

MicroScale Island by Eggy Pop

But don’t think that this LEGO water technique is only for flat oceans or quiet rivers. The Surfer by tiberium_blue shows just how far this technique can go.

Another rule of thumb for making LEGO water is when water isn’t in a collected mass – like when building waterfalls or tips of waves – to have clear (or white) pieces instead of blue translucent pieces, making the water look frothy. Here is another example of the cheese-slope technique; Waterfall Landscape by Thoy Bradley:

Waterfall Landscape by Thoy Bradley

LEGO Water Technique #5: TRANSLUCENT WHITE ON BLUE

The final LEGO water technique is my favorite and (in my opinion) the most realistic; put a layer of translucent clear plates on top of a layer of blue bricks – just that easy! Here are some examples: Amon Hen by Blake Baer and Jake Bittner, and Hurricane Irene also by Blake Baer:

Amon Hen by Blake Baer and Jake Bittner

Hurricane Irene by Blake Baer

Now the way to get the best results with all of these LEGO water techniques is finding the balance of mixing them together; for example by mixing translucent blue tiles with translucent cheese-slopes like in Swans Landing by Jason Railton. Notice how he added a few studded pieces to give the water a bit of a ripple behind the swan:

Swans Landing by Jason Railton

Or perhaps the mixing of the SNOT technique and translucent plates technique like in UAP Outpost 3 by Grant W.:

Anyways, try a few of these techniques out and see what you’re most comfortable with. Also check out these other techniques for ideas (click on any of the pictures to take you to the creator’s own gallery):

Riverside Stroll by Philip Stark

Swimming Cube by HKLUG

Poseidon Float by Legohaulic

Skier by JETfri

I hope you learned a little bit about making LEGO water and that you might try out some of these techniques. Oh, and if you have any other good LEGO water techniques make sure you put a link in your comment. Thanks.

Please welcome Quad’s first post at theBrickBlogger! Quad is a TFOL (Teen-Fan-of-LEGO) from over at MOCpages. You can visit him by clicking on his name at the top of his post. Thank you, Quad, for the excellent article!

You are a TFOL and you wrote this? Wow! Excellent post! Wonderful research! I’m impressed! I especially like the graduating water in Microscale island. It is very realistic. Also, some of the waterfall thechniques are great!

Haha, Quad… I was given the link… That’s how I came to a “Place like this”. Of course I couldn’t leave without commenting on your amazing writing skills and research knowledge and knowledge altogether. ^_^
So… Kudos to the Lego master! Woot!